Come, agree, the law’s costly.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Justice
In church your grandsire cut his throat; to do the job too long he tarried: he should have had my hearty vote to cut his throat before he married.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Ancestry, Ancestors
Under this window in stormy weather I marry this man and woman together; Let none but Him who rules the thunder Put this man and woman asunder.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Weather
Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Vanity
A wise person should have money in their head, but not in their heart.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Money
The strongest passions allow us some rest, but vanity keeps us perpetually in motion. What a dust do I raise! says the fly upon a coach-wheel. And at what a rate do I drivel says the fly upon the horse’s back.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Vanity
Don’t set your wit against a child.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Wit, One liners, Parents, Parenting
She looks as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Insults
Most sorts of diversion in men, children and other animals are an imitation of fighting.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Sports
When we are old, our friends find it difficult to please us, and are less concerned whether we be pleased or not.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Friendship
I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Kissing, Kisses
As blushing will sometimes make a whore pass for a virtuous woman, so modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Shame
One principal point of good-breeding is to suit our behavior to the three several degrees of men—our superiors, our equals, and those below us.
—Jonathan Swift
Mere rhetoric, in serious discourses, is like flowers in corn, pleasing to those who look only for amusement, but prejudicial to him who would reap profit from it.
—Jonathan Swift
But when a Man
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Propaganda
As universal a practice as lying is, and as easy a one as it seems, I do not remember to have heard three good lies in all my conversation.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Lying
A fig for your bill of fare; show me your bill of company.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Diet
The affectation of some late authors to introduce and multiply cant words is the most ruinous corruption in any language.
—Jonathan Swift
An excuse is a lie guarded.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Courage
Though Diogenes lived in a tub, there might have been, for aught I know, as much pride under his rags, as in the fine-spun garments of the divine Plato.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Pride
It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by Providence as an evil to mankind.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Death, Dying
I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child, well nursed, is at a year old, a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee, or a ragout.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Children
Men of great parts are often unfortunate in the management of public business because they are apt to go out of the common road by the quickness of their imagination.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Business
In oratory, the greatest art is to conceal art.
—Jonathan Swift
The lack of belief is a defect that ought to be concealed when it cannot be overcome.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Belief
In the school of political projectors, I was but ill entertained, the professors appearing, in my judgment, wholly out of their senses; which is a scene that never fails to make me melancholy. These unhappy people were proposing schemes for persuading monarchs to choose favorites upon the score of their wisdom, capacity, and virtue; of teaching ministers to consult the public good; of rewarding merit, great abilities, and eminent services, of instructing princes to know their true interest, by placing it on the same foundation with that of their people; of choosing for employment persons qualified to exercise them; with many other wild impossible chimeras, that never entered before into the heart of man to conceive; and confirmed in me the old observation, that there is nothing so extravagant and irrational which some philosophers have not maintained for truth.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Politics, Politicians
Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Power
War! that mad game the world so loves to play.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: War
The greatest inventions were produced in the times of ignorance, (such) as the use of the compass, gunpowder and printing.
—Jonathan Swift
Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Men
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Oscar Wilde Irish Poet, Playwright
- Sheridan Le Fanu Irish Novelist
- Laurence Sterne Irish Anglican Novelist
- Thomas Love Peacock English Satirist
- Oliver Goldsmith Anglo-Irish Novelist, Poet
- James Joyce Irish Novelist
- Edmund Burke British Philosopher, Statesman
- Elizabeth Bowen Irish Novelist
- William Butler Yeats Irish Poet
- George William Russell Irish Author
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